THE LIFE OF
JEAN HENRI FABRE
THE ENTOMOLOGIST
1823–1910
BY THE ABBE
AUGUSTIN FABRE
TRANSLATED BY
Bernard Miall
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1921
TO MY PARENTS
IN TOKEN OF GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION
FOR THE LABOURS AND THE EXAMPLE
OF THEIR LIVES
NOTE BY TRANSLATOR
Those who wish to become more fully acquainted with Jean-Henri Fabre’s
delightful Souvenirs Entomologiques will find them, arranged in a
different order, in the admirable series of translations from the pen
of Mr. Teixeira de Mattos, published by Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Company,
New York; a series which will, before long, be complete and contain the
whole of the ten volumes of Souvenirs. Other translations are The Life
and Love of the Insect, translated by Mr. Teixeira de Mattos; Social
Life in the Insect World, translated by myself; Wonders of Instinct,
translated by Mr. Teixeira and myself; and Fabre, Poet of Science
(another biography), by Dr. G. V. Legros, translated by myself.
Post-war conditions have made it necessary somewhat to abridge the
author’s text, which fills two volumes. If, however, as I hope, these
pages send the reader to my friend Mr. Teixeira’s delightful versions
of the Souvenirs, their principal aim will be fulfilled.
Bernard Miall.
1921.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
I was eighteen years old; I was dreaming of diplomas, of a doctor’s
degree, of a brilliant university career. To encourage me and incite me
to emulation, one of my uncles, rather more well-informed than those
about him, addressed me much as follows:
“Put your back into it, my boy! Go ahead; follow the footsteps of your
fellow-countryman and kinsman, Henri Fabre of Malaval, who has done
what you want to do, and has become an eminent professor and a learned
writer.”
It is hardly credible, but this was the first time I had heard any one
mention this famous namesake of mine, whose family, nevertheless, used
to live on the opposite slope of the puech against which my tiny native
mas was built.
His remark was not unheeded, and the name then engraved upon my memory
has never been erased from it.
A few years later, having secured my doctor’s degree, I was teaching
philosophy, not in the University, but in the Grand Seminaire [1] of
Lyons. The problem of instinct, which enters into the province of
psychology, led me to consult the works of J. H. Fabre, which were
recommended to me by the professor of Science. My worthy colleague
regarded the author of the Souvenirs Entomologiques with a sort of
worship, and it was with positive delight that he used to read aloud to
me the finest passages of those masterly “Essays upon the Instincts and
Habits of Insects.”
A little later I chanced, in the course of my reading, on the Revue
Scientifique de Bruxelles, which contained abundant extracts from the
sixth volume of the Souvenirs, in which the author becomes
confidential, and tells us, in the most delightful fashion, of his
earliest childhood in the home of his grandparents “who tilled a poor
holding on the cold granite backbone of the Rouergue tableland.” Hullo!
I said to myself: so the prince of entomologists is a child of the
Rouergue! What a discovery!
For a long time I thought of publishing, in the local press, a short
biography of Fabre with a few extracts from his writings. I was only
waiting an opportunity and a little leisure.
This leisure I had not yet found, when the opportunity offered itself
in a decisive and urgent fashion, in the scientific jubilee of the
great naturalist, which was celebrated at Sérignan on April 3, 1910.
When all Provence was agog to celebrate the great man, when from all
parts of France and from beyond her frontiers evidences of sympathy and
admiration were pouring in, was it not only fitting that a voice should
be upraised from the heart of Aveyron, and, above all, from that corner
of Aveyron in which he first saw the light of day; if only to echo so
many other voices, and to restore to his native countryside this
unrivalled son of the Rouergue who had perhaps too readily been
naturalised a Provençal? Moreover, in these times of overweening
atheism, when so many pseudo-scientists are striving to persuade the
ignorant that science is learning to dispense with God, would it not be
a most timely thing to reveal, to the eyes of all, a scientist of
undoubted genius who finds in science fresh arguments for belief, and
manifold occasions for affirming his faith in the God who has created
and rules the world?
And that was the origin of this book, the genesis of which will explain
its character. Written especially for local readers, and consisting
entirely of articles which appeared in the Journal d’Aveyron, it is
fitting that it should piously gather up the most trivial local
reminiscences of J. H. Fabre, and that it should be full of allusions
to the men and the things of Aveyron. Written solely to call attention
to the life and labours of Fabre, the writer seeks to co-ordinate in a
single book the biographical data scattered throughout the ten volumes
and four thousand pages of the Souvenirs.
The reader must not take exception to the all but invariable praise of
their author nor to that spirit of enthusiasm which he will perhaps
detect behind the pages of this volume. This is not to say that
everything in the life and work of our hero is equally perfect and
worthy of admiration. Whether knowledge or virtue be in question human
activity must always fall short somewhere, must always in some degree
be defective. Omnis consummationis vidi finem, said the Psalmist. But
apart from the fact that it is not yet time, perhaps, to form a final
judgment, the reader, I trust, will remember that this book comes to
him with an echo of the jubilee celebrations of Sérignan, and the
homage, still touched with enthusiasm, of a son of Aveyron and the
Vezins countryside to the most illustrious of his fellow-countrymen.
La Griffoulette, near Vezins,
August 28, 1910.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE SÉRIGNAN JUBILEE 1
II THE URCHIN OF MALAVAL 10
III THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LÉONS 24
IV THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LÉONS (continued) 39
V AT THE COLLEGE OF RODEZ 65
VI THE PUPIL TEACHER: AVIGNON (1841–43) 74
VII THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS 87
VIII THE SCHOOLMASTER: CARPENTRAS (continued) 99
IX THE PROFESSOR: AJACCO 118
X THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (1852–1870) 128
XI THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (continued) 143
XII THE PROFESSOR: AVIGNON (continued) 166
XIII RETIREMENT: ORANGE 199
XIV THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (1879–1910) 209
XV THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (continued) 223
XVI THE HERMIT OF SÉRIGNAN (continued) 232
XVII THE COLLABORATORS 253
XVIII THE COLLABORATORS (continued) 274
XIX FABRE’S WRITINGS 293
XX FABRE’S WRITINGS (continued) 324
XXI A GREAT PREPARATION 358
XXII THE LAST HEIGHTS (1910–1915) 366
THE LIFE OF JEAN HENRI FABRE
CHAPTER I
THE SÉRIGNAN JUBILEE
In a few days’ time [2] naturalists, poets, and philosophers will
repair in company to Sérignan, in the neighbourhood of Orange. What is
calling them from every point of the intellectual horizon, from the
most distant cities and capitals, to a little Provençal village? Moussu
Fabré, they would tell you yonder, in a tone of respectful sympathy.
But who is the Moussu Fabré thus cherished by the simplest as well as
by the most cultivated minds? He is a sturdy old man of all but ninety
years, who has spent almost the whole of his life in the company of
Wasps, Bees, Gnats, Beetles, Spiders, and Ants, and has described the
doings of these tiny creatures in a most wonderful fashion in ten large
volumes entitled Souvenirs Entomologiques or Etudes sur l’Instinct et
les Mœurs des Insectes. [3]
One might say of this achievement what the author of Lettres Persanes
said of his book: Proles sine matre. It is a child without a mother. It
is, in short, unprecedented. [4] It has not its fellow, either in the
Machal of Solomon, or the apologues of the old fabulists, or the
treatises on natural history written by our modern scientists. The
fabulists look to find man in the animal, which for them is little more
than a pretext for comparisons and moral narratives, and the scientists
commonly confine their curiosity to the dissection of the insect’s
organs, the analysis of its functions, and the classification of
species. We might even say that the insect is the least of their cares,
for, like Solomon, they delight in holding forth upon all the creatures
upon the earth or in the heavens above, and all the plants “from the
cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out
of the wall” (1 Kings iv: 32–33).
Fabre, on the contrary, has eyes only for the insect. He observes it by
and for itself, in the most trivial manifestations of its life: the
living, active insect, with its labours and its habits, is the thing
that interests him before all else, guiding his investigation of the
infinite host of these tiny lives, which claim his attention on every
hand; and in this world of insects wealth of artifice and capacities of
the mental order seem to be in an inverse ratio to beauty of form and
brilliance of colour. For this reason Fabre learns to disdain the
magnificent Butterfly, applying himself by preference to the modest
Fly: the two-winged Flies, which are relatives of our common House-fly,
or the four-winged Flies, the numerous and infinitely various cousins
of the Wasps and Bees; the Spiders, ugly indeed, but such skilful
spinners, and even the Dung-beetles and Scarabæidæ of every species,
those wonderful agents of terrestrial purification.
In this singular world, which affords him the society which he prefers,
he has gathered an ample harvest of unexpected facts and highly
perplexing actions on the part of these little so-called inferior
animals. No one has excelled him in detecting their slightest
movements, and in surprising all the secrets of their lives. Darwin
declared, and many others have repeated his words, that Fabre was “an
incomparable observer.” The verdict is all the more significant in that
the French entomologist did not scruple to oppose his observations to
the theories of the famous English naturalist.
Not only in the certainty and the detailed nature of his facts, but
also in the colour and reality of his descriptions is his mastery
revealed. In him the naturalist is reduplicated by a man of letters and
a poet, who “understands how to cast over the naked truth the magic
mantle of his picturesque language,” [5] making each of his humble
protagonists live again before our eyes, each with its characteristic
achievements. So striking is this power of his that Victor Hugo
described him as “the insects’ Homer,” while one of the most
accomplished of our scientists, Mr. Edmond Perrier, Director of the
Museum of Natural History, not content with saluting him as “one of the
princes of natural history,” speaks of his literary work in the
following terms:
The ten volumes of his Souvenirs Entomologiques will remain one of
the most intensely interesting works which have ever been written
concerning the habits of insects, and also one of the most
remarkable records of the psychology of a great observer of the
latter part of the nineteenth century. In them the author depicts
to the life not only the habits and the instincts of the insects;
he gives us a full-length portrait of himself. He makes us share
his busy life, amid the subjects of observation which incessantly
claim his attention. The world of insects hums and buzzes about
him, obsesses him, calling his attention from all directions,
exciting his curiosity; he does not know which way to turn.
Overwhelmed by the innumerable winged army of the drinkers of
nectar who, on the fine summer days, invade his field of
observation, he calls to his aid his whole household: his
daughters, Claire, Aglaé, and Anna, his son Paul, his workmen, and
above all his man-servant Favier, an old countryman who has spent
his life in the barracks of the French colonies, a man of a
thousand expedients, who watches his master with an incredulous yet
admiring eye, listening to him but refusing to be convinced, and
shocking him by the assertion, which nothing will induce him to
retract, that the bat is a rat which has grown wings, the slug an
old snail which has lost its shell, the night-jar a toad with a
passion for milk, which has sprouted feathers the better to suck
the goats’ udders at night, and so forth. The cats and the dog join
the company at times, and one almost regrets that one is not within
reach of the sturdy old man, so that one might respond to his call.
See him lying on the sand where everything is grilling in the
burning rays of the sun, watching some wasp that is digging its
burrow, noting its least movement, trying to divine its intentions,
to make it confess the secret of its actions, following the labours
of the innumerable Scarabaei that clean the surface of the soil of
all that might defile it—the droppings of large animals, the
decomposing bodies of small birds, moles, or water-rats; putting
unexpected difficulties in their way, slily giving these tiny
life-companions of his problems of his own devising to solve. [6]
That is well-expressed, and it gives us a fairly correct idea of the
vital and poetic charm of the Souvenirs.
The same writer asks, speaking of the well-defined tasks performed by
all these little creatures beloved of the worthy biologist of Sérignan:
“Who has taught each one its trade, to the exclusion of any other, and
allotted the parts which they fill, as a rule with a completeness
unequalled, save by ‘their absolute unconsciousness of the goal at
which they are aiming?’ This is a very important problem: it is the
problem of the origin of things. Henri Fabre has no desire to grapple
with it. Living in perpetual amazement, amid the miracles revealed by
his genius, he observes, but he does not explain.”
For the moment we can no longer subscribe to the assertions of the
learned Academician, [7] nor to his fashion of writing history, which
is decidedly too free. The truth is that Fabre, who delights in the
pageant of the living world, does not always confine himself to
recording it; he readily passes from the smallest details of
observation to the wide purviews of reason, and he is at times as much
a philosopher as a poet and a naturalist. The truth is that he often
considers the question of the origins of life, and he answers it
unequivocally like the believer that he is. It is enough to cite one
passage among others, a passage which testifies to a brief uplifting of
the heart that presupposes many others: “The eternal question, if one
does not rise above the doctrine of dust to dust: how did the insect
acquire so discerning an art?” And the following lines from the close
of the same chapter: “The pill-maker’s work confronts the reflective
mind with a serious problem. It offers us these alternatives: either we
must grant the flattened cranium of the Dung-beetle the distinguished
honour of having solved for itself the geometrical problem of the
alimentary pill, or we must refer it to a harmony that governs all
things beneath the eye of an Intelligence which, knowing all things,
has provided for all?” [8]
And indeed, when we consider closely, with the author of the Souvenirs,
all the prodigies of art, all the marks of ingenuity displayed by these
sorry creatures, so inept in other respects, then, whatever hypothesis
we may prefer as to the formation of species, whether with Fabre we
believe them fixed and unchanging, or whether with Gaudry [9] we
believe in their evolution, we cannot refrain from proclaiming the
necessity of a sovereign Mind, the creator and instigator of order and
harmony, and we are quite naturally led to repeat, to the glory of God
the Creator, the beautiful saying of Saint Augustine: “Fecit in cœlis
angelos et in terris vermiculos, nec major in illis nec minor in
istis.”
Now this venerable nonagenarian whom naturalists, poets, and
philosophers are so justly about to honour in Sérignan, because his
brow is radiant with the purest rays of science, poetry, and
philosophy: this entomologist of real genius, he whom Edmond Perrier
ranks among “the princes of natural history,” he whom Victor Hugo
called “the insects’ Homer,” he whom Darwin proclaimed “an incomparable
observer”: who is there in Aveyron, knowing that he was born beneath
our skies and that he has dwelt upon our soil, but will rejoice to feel
that he belongs to us by his birth and the whole of his youth?